Queen Hildegarde eBook

One lovely morning Hildegarde stood at the back door,
feeding the fowls. She wore her brown gingham
frock with the yellow daisies on it, and the daisy-wreathed
hat, and in her hands she held a great yellow bowl
full of yellow corn. So bright a picture she
made that Farmer Hartley, driving the oxen afield,
stopped for pure pleasure to look at her. Around
her the ducks and hens were fighting and squabbling,
quacking, clucking, and gobbling, and she flung the
corn in golden showers on their heads and backs, making
them nearly frantic with greedy anxiety.

[Illustration: “SHE FLUNG THE CORN IN GOLDEN
SHOWERS ON THEIR HEADS.”]

“Wal, Huldy,” said the farmer, leaning
against Bright’s massive side, “you look
pooty slick in that gown, I must say. I reckon
thar ain’t no sech gown as that on Fifth
Avenoo, hey?”

“Indeed, I don’t believe there is, Farmer
Hartley,” replied Hilda, laughing merrily; “at
least I never saw one like it. It is pretty,
I think, and so comfortable! And where
are you going this morning with the mammoths?”

“Down to the ten-acre lot,” replied the
farmer. “The men are makin’ hay thar
to-day. Jump into the riggin’ and come along,”
he added. “Ye kin hev a little ride, an’
see the hay-makin’. Pooty sight ’tis,
to my thinkin’.”

“May I?” cried Hilda, eagerly. “I
am sure these fowls have had enough. Go away
now, you greedy creatures! There, you shall have
all there is!” and she emptied the bowl over
the astonished dignitaries of the barn-yard, laid
it down on the settle in the porch, and jumped gayly
into the “rigging,” as the great hay-cart
was called.

“Haw, Bright! hoish, Star!” said the farmer,
touching one and then the other of the great black
oxen lightly with his goad. The huge beasts swayed
from side to side, and finally succeeded in getting
themselves and the cart in motion, while the farmer
walked leisurely beside them, tapping and poking them
occasionally, and talking to them in that mystic language
which only oxen and their drivers understand.
Down the sweet country lane they went, with the willows
hanging over them, and the daisies and buttercups
and meadow-sweet running riot all over the banks.
Hilda stood up in the cart and pulled off twigs from
the willows as she passed under them, and made garlands,
which the farmer obediently put over the oxen’s
necks. She hummed little snatches of song, and
chatted gayly with her kind old host; for the world
was very fair, and her heart was full of summer and
sunshine.

“No, not all my life,” replied the farmer,
“though pooty nigh it. I was ten year old
when my uncle died, and father left sea-farin’,
and kem home to the farm to live. Before that
we’d lived in different places, movin’
round, like. We was at sea a good deal, sailin’
with father when he went on pleasant voyages, to the
West Indies, or sich. But sence then I ain’t
ben away much. I don’t seem to find no pleasanter
place than the old farm, somehow.”